General questions about breaking into the competitive pokemon scene!

[feralig8rx]

Hey everyone, first post in the community in 2 years haha. Been a while!

So a gaming tournament venue just opened up near me and I want to get involved but the only game they play that I am interested in picking up is competitive pokemon. The last time I tried to build an actual team was black and white, but it never took off because it was too difficult. I used to follow a ton of poketubers but a lot have since then moved on to other games or quit youtube. I have a few questions below that I would like to get more information on so I can start learning the game:

1. Who are some of the best poketubers still around that I can learn from?
2. Is ORAS the only game that people are playing competitively now? People still playing X&Y? Can you battle cross game?
3. In the past I remember there were ways to "create" IV/EV trained pokemon without having to commit the time, I know some people frown upon it but frankly I don't always have free time to grind out teams of pokemon. I will do it if its the only way but I'd rather see if there's other options. I remember in B/W I had an app on my phone that let me create a pokemon and then pick it up at the GTS or something? Anything like that still around or do all the top players actually EV/IV train their own?
4. No idea what the meta is, any suggestions for a newbie? One that isn't overly complicated and somewhat easy to learn the game with?

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

 

[LazyMew123]

Hey everyone, first post in the community in 2 years haha. Been a while!

So a gaming tournament venue just opened up near me and I want to get involved but the only game they play that I am interested in picking up is competitive pokemon. The last time I tried to build an actual team was black and white, but it never took off because it was too difficult. I used to follow a ton of poketubers but a lot have since then moved on to other games or quit youtube. I have a few questions below that I would like to get more information on so I can start learning the game:

1. Who are some of the best poketubers still around that I can learn from?
2. Is ORAS the only game that people are playing competitively now? People still playing X&Y? Can you battle cross game?
3. In the past I remember there were ways to "create" IV/EV trained pokemon without having to commit the time, I know some people frown upon it but frankly I don't always have free time to grind out teams of pokemon. I will do it if its the only way but I'd rather see if there's other options. I remember in B/W I had an app on my phone that let me create a pokemon and then pick it up at the GTS or something? Anything like that still around or do all the top players actually EV/IV train their own?
4. No idea what the meta is, any suggestions for a newbie? One that isn't overly complicated and somewhat easy to learn the game with?

Any help is appreciated, thank you!

Hey I'm not sure if you're still needing the help but I'm happy to answer the questions if you do!

So Question number one:
Okay so, there are a number of poketubers that I would recommend using to build up knowledge. First of all I would say Verlisify is a good candidate for this. This may come as a surprise for you as there is a lot of hate and drama going on between him and many other YouTubers but there is no denying that he is one of the best for people starting out. He has a playlist of how to use every single pokemon in the game and has several tutorials and guides to help people start building teams. He is the one that got me into competitive battling. I would say that HoodlumScrafty is a great YouTuber as well with his extensive knowledge of the game and how it works. There are many others that I could mention like Pimpnite, JustinFlynn and of course Alex Ogloza.

Question number two:
I would definitely recommend ORAS but I believe you can still battle as long as the opponent is not using newly introduced pokemon/forms (such as primal groudon)

Question number three:
Okay so you can create Pokemon that can be used online with a device called the powersave which you can buy on amazon. Personally I'm against it but I have nothing against other people doing it or using them I just prefer to get mine legitimately.

Question Number four:
The meta is a list of commonly used Pokemon competitively. The best thing to do is to use the list https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/oras-ou-viability-ranking-thread-v2-check-post-2500-pg-100.3526596/ here and find ways of countering them. Like say I was wanting to find a way to counter talonflame which is a very common pokemon, I would search up on google "Good talonflame counters" a couple of lists will come up with good counters and in this case, things such as Rotom-Wash and Tyranitar will come up as they are strong effective ways of getting rid of talonflame.

Hope I helped a bit, sorry that some of the answers were a bit long!

Thanks!